The review of this product has been interesting, because I was able to test it with both footage from a documentary I'm working on which is set in Mexico (I did initial scouting footage with a little AVCHD cam which allowed me to test Vegas Pro 8's AVCHD support.) and, on a personal note, with footage we captured in Bogota, Colombia, where we spent five weeks completing the adoption of our baby boy, Nicolas. With all this happening at a faster pace than expected, the subsequent review date for this software got pushed back from late last year to early this year. In the end, it gave me more time to work with the software and see how useful it was with a variety of different footage sources for everything from personal to professional projects.
For those of you who would like a nutshell review before the main review, let me say that Sony VegasPro 8 is a great choice for any editing system. If I were you, I’d buy it. Now, with that said, let me caution you that I am an audio person who became a film/video person, so my perspective might not be the same as all of our readers. As such, I'll break it down into its specific areas and you can see if it's the sort of program that would work well for you and your production needs.
First off, my experiences in audio production and editing have been based around the Pro Tools platform. My system includes a Mac-based, 48 track Pro Tools studio and a PC-based video editing computer. A Mac for video would have probably made for a better workflow, but I am very comfortable with my current setup. Being so “at home” working and editing in the Pro Tools environment, the Vegas editing packages from Sony have always been a good fit for me, since Vegas started out, originally, as an audio program. It has everything to do with the progression of the software from an audio recording and editing program to what we have today, so the learning curve for me was not bad.
Pro 8 comes with a comprehensive collection of tools that covers everything from what's needed to edit a “new baby video” to what's need to create a full-on independent film. In addition to VegasPro 8 software, the package also includes DVD Architect Pro 4.5, Dolby Digital encoding software and over 30 DirectX audio plug-ins. Installation took some time, but I had no problems or issues pop up. It is typical and probably took about a half hour. For the record, my PC editing computer is not the most robust, but since Vegas doesn’t eat up chunks of your CPU to work, it does the job nicely. That is another reason to recommend it.
The Vegas 8 Pro main layout bears a closer reselmblance to other video editing programs than it has in past versions.
Ease of Use
If you have used any Vegas product in the past, you will not have any problems here. If you haven’t, it is pretty straight forward as far as NLEs go (although very different from the likes of FCP, Premiere Pro, & Avid). I am quite familiar with Vegas and I have used it for more than a few projects, but I still get stuck from time to time. I was very impressed with the support offered in the program. The online help is great, but the Interactive Tutorials, a new feature for VegasPro 8, really made it easy. Instead of having to read through a typical guide, the new approach is to offer interactive guides that literally walk you through a specific situation. I didn’t have to turn to this too much, which says something about the intuitive nature of the program, but it’s nice that I had the feature available to me. The screen layout is different than on previous versions, appearing more like Adobe, for example. It was a little off putting since I was so used to the layout of previous releases, but now I prefer it. (You may recall editor, Jeremy Hanke, requesting a more "video-like" layout for the previous two versions of this software. Apparently someone at Sony took notice.)
